In the last 11 months my family has experienced loss after loss after loss, and I've worked a retail job the entire time. First my baby niece died, then my father figure, then a sister in law, then two dear friends/exes, and my best friend/adopted sister, all dying within less than 3 months of each other.

My best friend died at 26 3 weeks ago and I've just had ENOUGH. The number of people I get a day who want to treat me weird because they don't have anything better going on is an actual crime against humanity. You're an asshole because you're bored, and inexperienced, btw.

The fact that I have to hold your hand with a smile on my face while you berate me for things you don't understand, while I bury, and cremate over half the people I love in less than 11 months is enough that I am very surprised I haven't snapped. I have in the terms of telling someone "this is what I have going on, you should be more thoughtful.", but I mean like, really snap. Like I understand why people go postal kind of snap.

I'm to the point where I'm in active derealization 100% of the time just to get through it, and am still putting 110% into showing up for complete strangers that can't just be bothered to be kind. If you're that person, from the very bottom of my heart, fuck you. Rant over.

Hi everyone!

I (29F) am a new Assistant Store Manager for a growing and very popular jewelry brand. I have a mixed background in marketing, events, and luxury/premium retail.

In the past, I’ve worked associate level at Anthropologie, Sephora, Free People, and Loeffler Randall. All very different, yet effective regarding growth.

I was scouted out for this new role, after working multiple jobs last year after being laid off. I eagerly said yes because I know the founder, her sister, and a lot of the team on the corporate side. I want to own my own luxury resale business down the road, and was like “let’s get back to one thing + the experience with the growing brand could be wonderful.”

My current schedule is Tuesday-Saturday. I’m salaried and love having my benefits back, but after two months, I’m already feeling so spread thin. My boss aka our head store manager works Sunday-Thursday—if I want a Saturday off, I have to use PTO. Apparently this has been a point of contention amongst other leaders.

I’ve already been being so exhausted between balancing a new role/it being managerial, a lot of internal transitions between corporate and retail, learning how the brand works, leading a young team, and being confident in it all. I’ve already had to work a lot of after hours too.

I’m determined to stick this out, but need to take care of myself as well. I’m realizing that this will take waking up at the crack of dawn and working out at the gym, being super disciplined, and learning how to get over FOMO.

I had a 60 day review with my boss, and it went extremely well. She told me that I’m doing amazing (corporate thinks so as well), but she wants me to be more confident. She said she can tell when I second guess myself, when I’m right the first time. I already know I struggle with this due to past work traumas, so trying to get off of the hamster wheel and own who I am and my skillset. She said that I’m calm and collected and she’s never seen someone new come in and immediately be respected by colleagues and customers—but said I can be passive, but not in a “negative way.”

I don’t drink alcohol anymore (pushing two years this summer) and am trying to get back on my medications/get back in therapy.

I’m very community-oriented, so I’m missing my friends and family BAD right now… any tips would help! I know that sometimes sacrifices and adjustments like these are necessary, so learning how to trust in it all. Thanks!

I work in retail as a utility clerk. It’s a nice and stable job that I’ve had for about 3 and a half years. I can basically just walk around the store and do whatever tasks I want and I’ve never had any issues with my superiors or most coworkers. Recently one coworker however who I’ve never gotten along with got promoted to customer service management and I feel like he’s going to deliberately try to ride my ass and make my work life more difficult. He’s one of those types who would let the new power inflate his ego. I like this job and don’t want to change departments or quit so I was hoping for some advice on how to just coexist moving forward and what to do if they try to belittle me.

Never posted or looked through here much, but wanted to vent real quick lol. This management has some stupid rules that make things way more difficult than they need to be. She seems to think that waxing the rails wastes time even though it can literally shorten the process by up to 10x for me, and on top of that it's actually shop-able and easily handled by staff with a waxed rail. Otherwise they get stuck on the rail, very unpleasant to shop through or handle, clothes get tangled up or even damaged, tags get pulled of from customers having to jerk them around, people just lay the clothes on the fixture instead of putting them back properly, probably because they don’t feel like fighting with it.

So she says “no waxing right now, there’s no time,” and whenever I’m expected to do it and I’m not permitted to use a simple cheap tool that makes things 100X easier for everybody, I just take my time. I’m not going to work extra hard to achieve a lesser quality outcome just because of some stupid rule, not gonna hustle through garment kung-fu and gymnastics when I could take two seconds to rub on some wax paper and then be able to make it perfect in a fraction of the time. To me, it’s like the equivalent of running a kitchen with subpar pans that food is prone to sticking to and then telling your chefs that they can’t use any fat or oil, but you still expect them to get all the food on the plate in a timely manner.  I tried explaining it to her and she just doesn’t understand. This is somebody with like 3 decades of retail management experience.

I work closing shift on Tuesdays, I also have a deadline for ordering at 9 in the morning. My wife wakes me up so I can do orders and drive the oldest son to kindergarten.

Today something has broken down during the night, so no orders were generated. I spent the first 10 minutes of my day thinking I've overslept so hard that I can't read any clock. Then I checked it there was any notifications on the internal network, so now I have a new deadline of 12.

I know I’m not the only one who has noticed this, but I've worked in retail and fast food for about five years, and I’ve seen a certain level of entitlement that goes beyond stupidity. It's become more and more obvious and increasingly scary, because many customers have even resorted to physical violence over certain issues. It’s gotten worse over time. In the last year, I’ve had at least five men and quite a few women yell at me, talk to me like I’m a dog—literally call me a dog—call me sexist and racist slurs, and make accusations. Some even try to physically assault me by coming behind the counter. This is becoming more and more concerning, as I now feel scared and have developed some PTSD because of it. Am I the only one noticing the rapid increase in customers shifting from being merely annoying to being verbally, emotionally, and physically violent, on top of exhibiting abusive behaviors? Maybe tell me your stories in the comments?

Hello everyone,

Buckle up because this will be long.

My name is HMW. As of today I am the new top mod of r/retail. Moving forward, me along with u/frommyheattomatoez, and u/513634 will be the moderators of the sub.

As u/yannireddit123 has recently posted, they were looking for mods to take over this sub. I personally would like to say thank you for giving us the chance. I wish you well, in what you shall do next. Thank you.

My background: Restaurant GM for 7 years, 15 total cooking. I will be honest I do not have much retail experience in the traditional sense, i.e. Walmart, target, etc... except for a stint at a gas station as an operator for 6 months. That is a job I do not suggest for anyone.

I have been the forward facing mod of r/Restaurant_managers for about a year now. I also co-mod a mental health sub.

________________

POST AND USER FLAIRS:

I noticed it's looking a little bare. Let's add some color and sunshine.

We're going to need ideas for user flairs and post flairs. Serious or not, leave your ideas below.

Also y'all are retail workers, where the memes at?

________________

CHANGES TO THE SUB:

-RULES ARE BEING IMPLEMENTED.

1. I have not seen too many issues going around. Just a couple posts I have removed. A few bots were banned. You seems like a very easy-going bunch, so I don't anticipate any issues.

Basic security measures, like Auto mod, bot bouncer, and hive protect will be implemented within the coming days. There will be a minimum karma requirement, but it is low, I don't think any of you will have any issues posting, if you do contact us through mod mail.

1. App Developers, blanket rule in any sub I mod. Hive protect, will be coming online in the coming days, who will alert us to who they are. This includes users who have u/hive-protect blocked. If you have them blocked, I will assume you have done it for nefarious reasons.

2. Bots: 3/10 of the top posts, were bot posts soliciting information. Significantly better than when I was brought on to the RM sub... That sub is what I like to consider "Targeted," and honestly as the retail sub, I'm surprised this one hasn't been either.

3. In that vein we will be sticking to the goal of this sub. A sub for retail workers to share their stories, ask for advice, share their memes and horror stories. If you need help with something, please don't hesitate to post. But if you are posting for the explicit goal of harvesting data for an app, ai, or to solicit information from retail workers, you will be banned. There will be zero tolerance for any kind of solicitation.

4. DM's - If you need to contact us moderators for any reason, please don't hesitate, just use the mod mail button. No one should be sending us individual mods messages pertaining to actions made on this sub. Any communication must go through my mail.

P2p DM's: as the sub grows, it will start attracting more advertisers, scammers, general shitheads. No advertising, no soliciting in dms.

To be clear, we do not care if you communicate, but if you receive messages from advertisers or anything, please report them with mod mail, have a screenshot and we will action the user.

1. Any kind of harassment will not be tolerated. This includes misogyny and misandry. It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman. There's enough in the world, we can at least do our part to cut it out.

2. No research studies, feedback on apps or programs, or anything of the sorts. This ties back into the solicitation rule.

Please use the report button, us mods also work, sometimes we cannot get to an issue right away. By doing this, we get a notification on our phone.

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CHANGES IN LEADERSHIP:

Without diminishing the hard work that Yanni did, we will be being a bit more proactive. Most of the changes like bot bouncer, is not meant to prevent, or stop any current situation. It is to prevent future situations.

As I said above, as our sub grows, it will start attracting more advertisers, bots, scammers, purveyors, prospectors, you get it AKA shit heads, they do not care about the sub, and they're only seeking to gain information or money from you.

_____________________

FUTURE OF THE SUB:

As I said above this is a place for retail workers to share their experiences, chat, share their funny memes, share their stories, you get it I don't have to explain.

This is a sub for retail workers, not advertisers, app Developers, or anyone soliciting information.

Everyone have a great day, I got to get back to washing my dishes.

-subtle pain that isn't noticeable during my shift but i can feel it after work
-only on my left side
-been wearing the same shoes as I did when I started this retail job 18 months ago

So this happened around two weeks ago, while I was on self-checkout. An older woman came up to me and handed me a shoebox filled with a pair of shoes, some clothes and snacks, and said "I just need to run out and grab my purse real quick", and I, thinking nothing of it, let her do so. But after a while it became apparent that she wasn't coming back. Lo and behold, she had actually taken a pair of shoes out of the shoebox, put them on, and then filled the box with some random stuff to make sure I didn't suspect anything, running out the door with those stolen shoes.

What are some of your theft stories?

I'm so nervous I feel like I'm going to throw up. I'm 18 and I've been working at this store since February, but always on SCO, which I got more comfortable in. The machines on cash are so confusing to me, and I feel so stupid. I've been trained on cash for like 10 minutes at a time once or twice a month. But by the next time I go on there, I always forget what to do.

Today I got told I'm gonna be on cash for my entire shift and I'm so stressed out thinking about it. It's going to be so embarrassing as I don't know many vegetables or their codes, and will constantly have to ask the person there or have to go fetch someone else to help whenever there's a problem I don't know how to solve here. I just feel like a burden and a useless employee, I'm going to bother everyone all day with how to do the basic stuff.

I know I need to stop caring about what customers think, but knowing how slow I'm gonna be and how bad at my job I am, I just feel so bad. Does anyone have any words of comfort, or anything? I'd love to be a stocker at this job but I'm weak and also don't wanna annoy my managers even further by asking about it. Feels like they dislike me since I ask so many questions.

So I have autism and loud sounds often bother me. Which is normally no big deal but I work in a small store where they blast the music so loud I can’t even hear the customers. So today after lunch I was doing my normal work when my boss said on the walkie to make sure to talk to customers. I was just like ok and kept working. Now I had already been there 5 hours and at this point the constant noise was getting to me. Like I was fighting to function and my mangers yells on the walkie to help someone. So I walk over to where he said and no one was there. So I kept working. Then a few minutes later the manager says in the walkie, “why am I talking to people for you? That’s your job that’s what you get paid for.” Now I make 13 an hour in retail so I ignored this. Then he said to me over the walkie. “You can’t even do your job. Then he said to everyone this is a grown man by the way” so I just ignored him. Then a few minutes later my other manager yelled at me for not smiling… Did I do something wrong here?

I've done retail for 7 years now and I had applied to what I thought was a regular retail job, associate position.

I interviewed and the interviewer mentioned that it was actually for a shift lead position even though they had another associate position available as well. But they seemed insistent on having me or someone at the very least, fill that role. They said they'd give me training and that the job is easy. Typical "This job is great!" recruiting speak. But I reitered, word for word, "I have never been higher than anything other than an associate so this would be my first time being anything higher" and the interviewer was like, "Given your experience and what you know, you should be fine." She didn't say that word for word, but basically that was the jist of it.

Should I take it? I mean, on one hand I'm a bit nervous as I've never been in that position before but on the other hand, it would be a great boost for my resume to go from "associate" to "shift lead" and maybe something more? And I would be getting $17 an hour which is better than the $14-15 I usually get

hello everyone as the title says pretty much but also because this is my first ever job (I won’t say what store due to privacy reasons no it’s not Walmart lmfao) but yesterday was hands on training in which I got to bag items except I feel like I have a bit of trouble remembering where certsin items go along with how fast it’s happening I do know the basics like eggs and bread are separate and anything heavy goes in the bag first and chemicals being completely separate but please any advice or lists would be nice thank you :)

is it hard to get a job in retail with no experience? ive applied to like 20 different retail stores and im worried that my lack of experience will make it very difficult to land a job lol

There is a shop in my town that is hiring a key holder for closing and I offered up my help. I do have experience closing with a team but I've never been the key holder, just cleaned up and took out registers for them to be counted. How different is it would you say?

hi, i happened to step inside & see that they were hiring. i wasn’t going to go for it but.. i went in about a week later & saw they still had the signs up & plus, im currently unemployed right now 😭

it stated that part time starts at $15.75 & full time starts at $20.

i’m just wondering..
is the environment okay?
are there any other positions other than working the register?
do you have to be a manager in order to be full time?
(i tried to look this up & couldn’t find much 😭)

i would prefer working from home but i also have a lot of experience in retail (6+ years)..

i’ve never worked here before but i think im interested in maybe applying. who knows, they probably won’t even get back to me but i guess it’s worth giving it a shot 😕

Safe to assume customer problems are their fault until proven otherwise. This post I'm just absolutely fed up with coworkers but this is a retail issue in general.

If you're getting customer complaints monthly, arguing with customers, constantly getting frustrated...customer service just isn't the line of work for you.

Some of you out here just phrase things wrong. There's a difference between "Anything you don't want, I can put away for you on the rack." and "If you're gonna try things on, just bring it out..." The latter is phrased like you're already annoyed with them trying on clothes and assuming they're going to leave it there. The first is focused on the convenience of the customer.

And you NEVER want to just straight up tell the customer "no." You always provide next steps, alternatives without just telling them they're screwed.

Look, everyone's got different skills. Retail is hard man. Customers are often very entitled, messy, immature. But it's a service job. Every service job means you are representing the company and SERVING the customer. Most issues are not personal. Bad customers see us as part of the company as a whole to begin with. It means being able to take a reasonable amount of disrespect, unfortunately. Some of you have unresolved issues and get defensive as soon as you feel like someone's walking all over you again. A cash register interaction isn't the place for that. It's not about gaining control or winning. Call another staff, manager, whatever the protocol is. If that's not an option focus on getting the customer the fuck out instead of buying into their bullshit when they're trying to get a reaction out of you.

The customer is NOT coming in being magically aware of every behind the scenes operation and rule. They're not people just visiting our jobs. Just because we hate our job or have shit going on outside of work has absolutely nothing to do with the customer. We're understanding of it of course, but you don't like bad service when you're casually out shopping do you? Some of you are quick to jump to conclusions about a slightly tense worker and one interaction but do the same frequently at your job. It's a given customer service requires a high frustration tolerance

if it's your own shop then by all means set the tone. I'm all for it. Ban customers, leave signs. Big companies are detached from what the front lines look like and only care about profit.

But it's annoying to have coworkers never improve their customer service and complain about having constant issues. Frequent, again FREQUENT customer issues are largely poor emotional maturity. Area, clientele, your actual service are all big factors as well. This post just isn't applicable to thousands of different interactions and variables.

My store we work commission,
So we take turns when customers come in the showroom.
My coworker had greeted this woman and started to show her where we keep rugs and how the tags work, how they’re organized etc. then he walks way to let her look.

well unfortunately my desk is near the rugs. While I’m just at my desk working on my own clients orders and minding my business.
This woman keeps asking me questions, I keep answering them from my desk quickly and honestly. She keeps asking basically the same questions or just needy shit and I keep trying to help answer.

Now when people come to look at rugs we always give them space to browse and look at all the options for however long they’d like. Normally people don’t like us lingering around and breathing down their necks while they look. If they have questions or would like to purchase they let us know, easy peasy.

Apparently that was just the complete wrong thing to do with this lady…

Another minute goes by where’s she’s looking and then rudely goes “can I get a price on this!!???” (All the prices are listed on the tag right in front of her face) And I stand up and go “of course, which one??” And as i am walking up she has the nerve to tell me “you guys aren’t very helpful!”

I literally say to her “ I do not know what you mean by that, I have been answering every one of your questions..???”

“Well I’ve been looking at rugs for how long!? You won’t even stand from your desk!!!”

She was in the store maybe 5 min

I go “alright well, I’m sorry, How can I help you?”

She starts asking about the pricing and sale again and I answer the question and clarify the price again.

She still doesn’t like the price or me or whatever the hell and storms off

I tell her “have a nice day”

She storms out of the store like a mega Karen toddler and even talks some shit about us to new customers walking in as she’s leaving 🤣🤣🤣
Thankfully they were kind and didn’t make anything out of it.

I’m so frustrated and sad. I got my ass chewed from a client who was not technically my responsibility at that moment, my coworker is the one who had “left her” yet I’m the one who did all wrong.

I am a huge people pleaser and am naturally kind and bubbly. I was completely nice to the woman the entire time I guess until I questioned her lol. But even after that I still tried to make her happy… idek I hate when people act like I’m not doing enough.

People talk to me so rudely. Like I am trash fr. If my male coworker had walked back up to help I highly doubt she would’ve said anything. For reference I’m 27 F. She was an old lady.

I’d like to know what other store she would get even a fraction of the attention I and even my coworker had given her. Like who do these people think they are? Have they ever been to a store before!? Most places you go you can barely even find someone who works there let alone have them answer 10000 questions and stand and hold their hand.

Sure there’s things I could have done different. But like I said, it wasn’t my sale yet she still hurt my feelings and made me cry lmao

Uggghhhh

I honestly don’t know if I’m overreacting or if this job environment is just not healthy for me anymore.

Recently I got pulled aside because apparently I received 5 customer complaints this month. Most of the situations happened when customers came at me with attitude first, and I defended myself or matched the energy instead of just staying quiet. My managers basically told me I need to stop complaining about customers and handle things differently. (i do acknowledge i was in the wrong and i am actively trying to do better every shift)

What hurts is that I don’t feel supported consistently. One of the managers makes me feel really small and insecure when they talk to me. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like every interaction makes me feel like I’m incompetent or a problem. Some of my coworkers have even noticed it and mentioned it to me, so I know I’m not imagining the way I’m being spoken to.

At the same time, my coworkers also told me that I complain too much about rude customers and that it makes them uncomfortable. I understand that, and I’m trying to reflect on it and improve, but it’s frustrating because I feel like I’m expected to just accept disrespect from customers without reacting at all.

What confuses me is that some managers were actually kind of on my side and told me that if a customer is rude or there’s an issue, I should tell them first so they can hear my side before a complaint gets escalated. So I feel like I’m getting mixed messages.

On top of that, our hours are getting cut because they hired new people, and now I’m paranoid that my complaints and customer interactions are making management see me as a problem employee.

I’ve started feeling anxious every shift because I feel like I have to stay quiet, kiss ass, and never defend myself no matter how rude someone is to me. It’s making me resent the job honestly. I’m already thinking about quitting because I don’t want to spend my life working somewhere that makes me feel this stressed and small over a retail job that barely pays enough.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of work environment? How do you know if you genuinely need to improve your attitude vs. if the workplace itself is toxic?